Easy come, easy go. I saw an ad on an animal rescue site that I frequent: "Become a Dog Trainer".

Hmmm. I've always been a bit of a pet whisperer, so I thought I'd click the link and see what I found. Long story short: I got to the training program's home page, then did a search on Google for reviews on the training program.

I found a bunch of complaints about said training program's quality of material and their externships. Apparently, the home-study part of the course is remedial at best, with "practice tests" that are identical to the real tests. The complaints about the externships appear to have come from students whose "mentors" were independent dog trainers accepting students from the training program for a fee, but who didn't actually want to TRAIN the students to do anything, lest they become competitors.

OK, so forget that particular correspondence course as an option. But I wonder what else is out there. Maybe there's something that's locally based, rather than being a correspondence course that will mysteriously not return phone calls when the student has complaints.